[00:00.04]A tribe of native people in Eastern Brazil has been fighting for 15 years [00:06.20]to prevent development on land they use to gather food. [00:12.04]This week, the Portuguese hotel group Vila Gale cancelled plans to build a hotel [00:18.60]on land claimed by the tribe on the southern coast of the state of Bahia. [00:25.40]The indigenous group Tupinambá de Olivença has 4,631 members. [00:34.28]They have been demanding that the land be identified as a reserve since 2003. [00:42.24]Brazil's indigenous rights agency, known as Funai, approved the request in 2009. [00:51.32]One of Brazil's highest courts ruled for the Tupinambá in 2016. [00:58.24]But the tribe still needs approval from the Ministry of Justice [01:02.84]and the president for the land to be an official reserve. [01:08.40]The tribe has made several requests, but has received no answer. [01:14.84]Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has not yet made a decision on the request. [01:20.92]He has stated that he does not want to give any more land to indigenous people. [01:27.88]Earlier this year, he said, there is "too much land for too few indigenous people." [01:35.52]Vila Gale said a local businessman offered them the land in 2018. [01:42.52]Government representatives approved the project, as did Brazil's tourism agency Embratur. [01:50.72]The company planned to open the hotel in 2021. [01:56.84]The company's chief executive officer Jorge Rebelo de Almeida [02:01.36]denies that there was an indigenous population on the land. [02:07.24]The company repeated that claim in a statement to reporters recently. [02:13.68]The statement said,"There is no indigenous reserve in this area, nor will there be." [02:21.00]The Tupinambá do not live on the land. [02:24.31]They use it for gathering food. [02:28.84]Portuguese anthropologist Susana Viegas [02:32.33]said the land was necessary "for the community's survival." [02:38.20]She has studied the Tupinambá since 2003. [02:43.36]Tribal chief Ramón Tupinambá said at a meeting in Brasilia in October [02:49.19]that there would be "war" if Vila Gale tried to rebuild on the land. [02:55.88]Vila Gale is one of Portugal's largest hotel companies. [03:01.16]It felt a lot of public pressure to cancel its plans [03:05.33]after a newspaper published a letter from Brazil's tourism agency [03:10.15]urging the government not to make the land a reserve. [03:15.08]The agency said the hotel would bring $200 million of investment and create 2,000 jobs. [03:24.56]Portuguese politicians and Viegas, however, asked the company to cancel its plans. [03:31.45]The company then said it would wait until the Ministry of Justice [03:36.04]and the president made the final decision. [03:40.40]But this week, the company decided it did not want the hotel [03:44.68]to go ahead in an "atmosphere of war." [03:48.52]It canceled the plans. [03:51.92]Brazil's 1988 Constitution guarantees the rights of indigenous people to their ancestral lands. [04:00.80]I'm Jonathan Evans.